English

Swing-Up of a Weakly Actuated Double Pendulum via Nonlinear Normal Modes

Systems and Control 2024-08-01 v1 Robotics Systems and Control

Abstract

We identify the nonlinear normal modes spawning from the stable equilibrium of a double pendulum under gravity, and we establish their connection to homoclinic orbits through the unstable upright position as energy increases. This result is exploited to devise an efficient swing-up strategy for a double pendulum with weak, saturating actuators. Our approach involves stabilizing the system onto periodic orbits associated with the nonlinear modes while gradually injecting energy. Since these modes are autonomous system evolutions, the required control effort for stabilization is minimal. Even with actuator limitations of less than 1% of the maximum gravitational torque, the proposed method accomplishes the swing-up of the double pendulum by allowing sufficient time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.08478,
  title  = {Swing-Up of a Weakly Actuated Double Pendulum via Nonlinear Normal Modes},
  author = {Arne Sachtler and Davide Calzolari and Maximilian Raff and Annika Schmidt and Yannik P. Wotte and Cosimo Della Santina and C. David Remy and Alin Albu-Schäffer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.08478},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Preprint of a paper to appear at the European Control Conference (ECC) 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:52:31.115Z